This article is part of a directory: The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom - Complete Guide And Walkthrough
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Video games look better than ever these days. I remember driving around the cities in Burnout 3: Takedown and thinking 'video games will never get any better than this’. I remember sailing the seven seas in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and thinking 'video games will never get any better than this'. I remember riding across the plains in Red Dead Redemption 2 and thinking 'video games will never get any better than this'.

I still think I'm right on that last one, but no doubt GTA 6 or TLOU3 or something else I can't even conceive of will prove me wrong. What I know for sure is that video games will look better than The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom one day. A lot of them already do. And yet it is still being hailed as one of the greatest games of all time. Maybe games shouldn't care so much about looking good.

Related: Tears Of The Kingdom’s Korok Crucifixions Aren’t The Problem, Ultrahand Is

There have been some cries of 'hypocrisy!' ringing out in the streets this past week. Redfall launched with only 30fps performance on console and was thrown in a ditch for it, while TOTK enjoyed universal acclaim for the same thing. However, these are very different. I'm on the record as not really caring about frames per second, as well as feeling indifferent to Zelda as a whole. I don't have a horse in this race. I don't want any side to 'win'. But regardless of how much you personally connect with it, it's undeniable that Zelda has some very impressive systems under the hood, and it feels like a bit of a sliding doors moment for gaming. What if we had gone that way instead of this?

Link posing for a photo in Zora armor in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom the video game

I'm not as loud an advocate for the Nintendo Switch 2 as the rest of you seem to be, but it doesn't take a genius to see that the Switch is far less powerful than the PS5. However, for all the talk and the marketing taglines proclaiming the Power of the PS5, we haven't seen this put to much use. The rift leaping in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart had potential, and obviously everything loads faster these days, but it feels like all this power is just being used as a high def camera that makes things look better.

I'm sure there are developers far smarter than I who will explain that there are certain elements of PS5 titles that would not have been possible on previous generations, and I'm also aware that a lot of the big games until now have been cross-gen. But what Tears of the Kingdom does with its physics and open world would still be remarkable on the PS5. So it's downright astounding on a Switch. Every item in the game has its own innate physics operating on it at all times, which is what makes the Recall ability work so well even when it's not intended to. We've seen players make their own creations, building everything from rotisserie torture devices for Koroks to working engines to satellite laser cannons. This is not a video game that looks better than others, but one built better than others on a foundational level.

A minecart with a Zonai rocket attached pointing vertically in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

Games that use internal physics so much are subject to what we vaguely refer to as jank, but Zelda seems to be relatively free of that so far. Things not only perform in the air or in motion as you would expect them to, but the game also seems to counter common mistakes by having its objects stabilise while remaining constantly active. A wing will still spin end over end if you push it recklessly, but it’s weighty enough to right itself if you put in the effort. Tears of the Kingdom wants you to push it to the limit and try to break it, because it knows you won't succeed often.

Contrast that with the rest of the industry. Again, not a Zelda fan. Don't care for it. Probably won't finish it. But it's startling that Tears of the Kingdom can have so much happening that players can't even see, while less technically complex games release in broken states. Too much time in development is spent on making games look great (likely a consequence of critics and gamers putting too much stock in visuals), that these games release looking smooth but with gameplay that crunches and judders and stalls. Even when it finally purrs after six months of patches, it's far less complex than Zelda's because the bulk of the thought and the budget and the time went towards how the game looked and not how it played.

link obtaining the recall ability from zelda in the temple of time in the legend of zelda tears of the kingdom

Games spend their money on things you can see - the draw distance, the ray tracing, the pores on a character's face. Zelda has used its budget on the things we can't see, on the engine underneath it all making this virtual playground spin and whistle. Ironically, this dedication to the unseen shows greatly. It's not that every game needs to let us stick this to that to make a thisthat, but more games should dedicate resources and, maybe more importantly, original thought to how a game plays and moves and breathes, not just how it looks. Things are not brought to life with flesh, but with heart and soul.

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